STAGE.

`Oedipus, Who?' a play that raises questions

"Oedipus, Who?," the title of a play at the Bailiwick Arts Center, might just seem like a catchy name for this adaptation of the play by Sophocles, but it is much more meaningful than that.

Director Ronald Jiu, who wrote this version of the Greek classic and is directing the production, is deaf and some of the actors in the play are too. So when Jiu translated the question "Who is Oedipus?" into American Sign Language and then back into English, it became "Oedipus, Who?"

In an e-mail exchange Jiu wrote that when he started reading the work by Sophocles, he couldn't put it down. He wanted to know all he could about what happened in the past that resulted in Oedipus' fulfilling the prophecy that he would kill his own father. The only problem was that to understand the actions of Oedipus, Jiu had to read through many long explanations by the various characters. He didn't think that formula would work for today's theatergoers. "So I adapted the long speeches into visual `flashback' scenes," he says, "where people in the audience can see what happened in the past."

Jiu has also made another major change. In his version Oedipus is deaf. He was raised in a world where people can hear but becomes the king of a city where everyone is deaf. Jiu explains, "They are facing the issues of the hearing and the deaf and Oedipus is seeking the truth about the murder of the king, and he is searching for his personal identity."

Just because this is a play with some deaf actors, that does not mean that it is a production just for deaf audiences. "Voice actors will speak for the actors who are signing," explains Jiu, "so audience members who are not deaf should not have any trouble understanding the play."

The proof of that is in the success of the Deaf Bailiwick Artists project, which was launched to give the deaf community a means of artistic expression in Chicago's professional theater community. Over the past several years the DBA has presented versions in sign language of plays such as "Equus" and "Our Town," as well as ones written by deaf writers. "Oedipus, Who?" expands DBA's scope. The play is its first production of a classical work.